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Traveler's pocket compass, Victorian-era turned brass
About the Item
Traveler's pocket compass, Victorian-era turned brass, late 19th century England, rose on sixteen-twenty copperplate engraving paper complete with goniometric circle.
Conservation status very good and fully functional.
Compass diameter cm 7 - inches 2.8, height cm 1.6 - inches 0.55.
The last photo is the gift box.
The invention of the compass is surrounded by a legendary aura; however, it is known that the discovery of magnetite, a material capable of attracting iron, took place in Magnesia, a city in Asia Minor from which this stone takes its name. In the early 1300s Giordano da Pisa speaks of the magnet as "so useful and necessary" to navigation. Even Dante in Paradise XII 29 demonstrates knowledge of the magnetized needle's peculiarity of pointing northward.
The fundamentals of the use of the magnetized needle in navigation are described by the Arab scientist Bailak Al Qabajaqi, who in 1242, during a sea voyage from Tripoli of Syria to Alexandria, saw it being used by the ship's commander: he put a needle stuck in a piece of cork in a bucket to float and brought a magnet close to it to, precisely, magnetize the needle; when he removed the magnetic stone, the needle immediately arranged itself in a north-south direction.
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